LEAH GARCHIK -- Round and Proud of It / Go ahead: Get angry, have fun and eat whatever you want. And if you hang out with the women from Fat!So? magazine, be sure not to mention dieting.

Published 4:00 am, Sunday, September 8, 1996

"I used to wonder where all the fatsos in Southern California were hiding," wrote Michele Gillaspie in a recent issue of the 'zine Fat!So? "A recent sojourn convinced me they weren't in hiding at all -- they were at Disneyland!

"I fit in all the rides . . . and there were fat people everywhere doing the same." And so, without a whimper of self-pity -- emotionally charged only by the author's quest for a good time -- begins "one fatso's review of the 'Happiest Place on Earth.' "

It's typical fare in Fat!So?, a publication whose regular "Anatomy Lesson" centerfold encompasses a series of photos of different versions of a given body part. The point: If we accept that everyone's hand or elbow looks different, let's accept that everyone's belly or butt looks different, too.

I asked Fat!So? founder/publisher/editor/main writer Marilynn Wann where she and I, and perhaps a few of her contributors/buddies, could meet for breakfast. "Fat chicks hang out at Mel's Diner," she said, and so there we were one recent Saturday, six women gathered round the table. "If it didn't say 'Low Calorie,' " said Wann, perusing the menu, "I would order the turkey hash." Wann, 29, is a free-lance journalist specializing in health care; Melysa Lieberman, 25, a graphic designer whose boyfriend obligingly went for a walk while we talked; Heather Urban, 28, a home care provider; Sondra Solovay, 25, just out of Boalt Law School and writing a book about fat oppression and the legal system; Betty Dudley, 44, a financial aid counselor at San Francisco State University.

Some had already had breakfast; others ate while we talked. None of us picked at our food.

What separates Fat!So? from other publications for women of size (yes, everybody is "of" some size or other, but "people of color" doesn't mean that everyone else is see- through, either) is that it's fun to read.

"The thing is," said Urban, "to be heavy but not weighty. We tend to take ourselves too seriously. Fat!So? puts a little lightness into the movement." Which isn't to say that there's no political thrust. "You have to be angry to be that funny," said Dudley. "You can be angry and happy at the same time," said Wann. The point is "not to be depressed."

"I'm round and that's OK with me," said Lieberman, her cheerful expression brightened by a variety of metal studs and rings that caught the light when she moved her head. "I'm a fat chick and I will look you in the eye and I won't apologize."

The other women nodded their agreement. I asked whether each had acquired the ability to take pleasure in her body at one sudden moment. I didn't call it "self-acceptance" because that would have implied that they were in some way disabled. Nobody at this table was considering herself disabled.

"I've heard of that happening," said Lieberman of the epiphany, "but I've never experienced it. Even now, it's a constant battle to fight the media images telling me that I'm not OK."

It's all about money, the women explained. The diet industry is profitable. Solovay compiles the Body Mass Index, a Harper's Index-like feature, in every Fat!So? The number of weight control services listed in the Oakland yellow pages, she wrote recently, is 55; the number of battered women's shelters is one.

Solovay's views sounded anti- capitalist; Dudley said she got into the movement through a woman she met at an anti-nuke protest at Lawrence Lab 14 years ago. Fat rights, gay rights and other political movements, are "all connected," said Solovay, "and we're all feminists."

Are fatsos more likely to be Republicans or Democrats, liberals or conservatives? The women shrugged. "Well, you know which party has the elephant," said Urban. "There are very few Republicans I can talk with," said Dudley.

As to whether fighting weightist bigotry makes fat people less likely to be bigoted in other ways, the answer, of course, was no. "I know some very bigoted fat people," said Dudley. "They don't always make the connection. Fat people are human." She thought for a moment. "But dieters are more likely to be Republicans."

Lieberman's first political action was the affixing of negative comments to diet posters. The worst posters, said Wann, are those yellow plastic invitations to "lose 30 pounds now," often affixed to telephone poles and light stanchions. "They don't tear," said Wann. "You have to hold on to the top and pull them down. Being fat helps you do that."

Solovay and Dudley are gay. Dudley came to San Francisco because there would be more gay women, but she has started to discover, as a fat woman, that "everybody was a friend, not a lover. Lesbians like that strong and healthy look."

Each of the fat chicks said she had been told that she ought to diet for health's sake. The memories spurred angry outbursts about the role of physicians.

Having heard horror stories about surgeons who refused to work unless patients lost weight, when Dudley needed gall bladder surgery she got a physician's name from friends. The operation was performed at Kaiser. "I wish you weighed a lot less," the surgeon told her before the procedure, "but it's my problem, not yours." When she commented on that unusual attitude, the doctor said, "I'm an internist, not a pediatrician. I treat adults who make their own decisions."

Seventy percent of Americans believe in miracles, Solovay's Body Mass Index reports. "Diets are the most self-destructive form of hope," said Wann.

The fat chicks avoid dieting with the zeal others apply to it. "I'm going to get through the day without dieting," is a mantra, along with "Can I eat this food and not count calories and not count fat grams?"

The women encounter particular anger from people who make their own weight a fetish. "They think, 'I work really hard to stay thin and you could do it, too,' " said Wann. "What they're really angry about is that they've based their self-worth on being thin."

Most Fat!So? readers and writers are women. "I've tried to solicit contributions from men," said Wann, "but in general, men don't talk about their personal issues." Women are more willing to reach across the great divides: male and female; medium-range fat women (180 pounds or so) and large fat women (300 pounds or more); and -- the huge one -- fat and thin.